


Anywhere I Want (Just Not Home)

by Magnetism_bind



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, F/F, Grief, Memories, Self-Denial, Self-Reflection, everything is over and sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:40:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25522255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnetism_bind/pseuds/Magnetism_bind
Summary: Eleanor reflects after losing Max.
Relationships: Eleanor Guthrie/Max
Comments: 2
Kudos: 19





	Anywhere I Want (Just Not Home)

Eleanor leaned back against the door of her office. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had never meant to let any of this go this far. But Max had to understand. She had to. But the way she looked at Eleanor when Flint and his men had come through the door...Something had broken inside her at that point. Eleanor had seen it in her eyes. That was the end. Whatever happened next, it was over. 

Wearily Eleanor crossed the room and sank into her chair. She wanted a drink. She wanted to go to bed. She wanted…fuck, she wanted Max to never have that look in her eyes again. She wanted to pick up the pieces of that brokenness inside her and mend them, shard by shard. She wanted to take Max’s hands in hers and whisper, ‘I was wrong. For once I was wrong.’ And have Max believe her, and forgive her for it.

But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t take it back even if Max would listen now. What was done was done.

Eleanor pulled out the bottle of rum from her drawer and took a swig. She had to be strong, to stand by her decisions. She couldn’t fucking break just because she’d broken Max’s heart.

Max would get over it. And soon she would realize that there had been no point in loving Eleanor anyway. She would have drifted from her eventually, Eleanor told herself. Max would have left. She wouldn’t have gone with her to make a new life. It was all just talk.

She took another swig and went to stand at the window. Nighttime in Nassau was loud, windows bright and laughter in the streets. There was always a fight somewhere, there was always something in the background filling the air with noise. 

Eleanor leaned against the windowsill, pressing the bottle to her breast. She shouldn’t love this place as much as she did. She shouldn’t want so much. She shouldn’t have thought she could make something out of her father’s failures. But she did. Oh, she did all of those things, even if she was damned for them.

If she closed her eyes she would see a hundred pictures of Max preserved behind her eyelids. _Max smiling up at her from bed. Max lifting a wineglass to her lips across a room and winking at her. Max walking on the beach alongside her, slipping her hand into Eleanor’s. Max falling back against the wall, gasping in pleasure as Eleanor pressed her mouth to her cunt. Max stroking her hair as Eleanor pressed her face into her pillow, pretending so many things had never happened. Max’s hands on her breasts as they moved together. Max, Max, Max._

She took a drink and set the bottle on the railing, resting her hands beside it as she looked out at the dark. Nassau was her home and her ambition and her future. She couldn’t give it up simply for Max. Even if her heart wept and her bones ached and her feet wanted to turn from this room and run down the street to wherever Max was tonight. She was more than those parts of herself and she wouldn’t let herself be ruled by them.

So she would let the sadness fill her tonight. She would let the wound bleed for now. She would sleep in the bed that still smelled liked Max and she would let herself sob into the sheets where they had lain together. She could allow herself that much.

Tomorrow she would have to steel herself against the world again. Tonight was different. Tonight Eleanor could let herself mourn the loss of a love she knew she could never win back. She stood there a while longer, sipping from the bottle and watching the lights in other windows shine on as the night grew darker beyond her windowsill.


End file.
